A little meta¹ post tonight. Earlier today, I created a /feeds page that (1) lists all the ways you can subscribe² to new posts from this site, and (2) explains quite a bit about what RSS is and how to use it.

I’ve had the one-liner in the footer about subscribing to HeyDingus for a while now, but I thought they could use some explanation and a more permanent home as I continue to tweak the site’s design. I like the idea of standardizing around some common sub-pages like /feeds, /now, /projects, /uses, and a few others. Well, now I’ve got one more crossed off that list.

But the RSS explainer was something that I’ve long thought was an important bit missing from my site. It’s one thing to advertise an RSS feed, but how many of the people stumbling across my posts have any idea about what RSS is or why it’d make their internet browsing better? I know that I love using RSS to keep up with the sites I like, and I really think it’s the best way to read the web. But I also recognize that it’s a pretty opaque concept if you’ve never had it explained. So much that I’m not sure how you’d get started using RSS if you’re at all intimidated by computers or the internet, even though it’s precisely one of those tools that make the internet more approachable.

So I wrote the explainer in — I hope — clear, relatable terms comparing RSS sync services to your email provider and RSS reader apps to email clients like Apple Mail, Spark, or Outlook. I also recommended some sync services and reader apps that I’ve tried over the years. If you’re curious about RSS, I hope you’ll take a look.

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1. Not that one this time.↩︎

2. I realized after making the page that it could equally be a /subscribe page. So that URL redirects there, too.↩︎

Blogging

A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.

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1️⃣ Victoria Song makes a compelling argument for why we should approach Apple’s ML-powered Journal prompts with extreme skepticism that they will suggest helpful topics. [🔗 Victoria Song // theverge.com]

2️⃣ I totally forgot that Apple TV+ scored a deal with Nathan Pyle for a Strange Planet series and I’m so excited! [🔗 Andrew Webster // theverge.com]

3️⃣ If you’re in Canada, watch out with your emoji because they can be used to “sign” a legally binding contract. [🔗 Nick Heer // pxlnv.com]

4️⃣ A new (beta) podcast player has entered the ring. I really some of the UX here. Go check out its settings screen! [🔗 @rishimody // threads.net]

5️⃣ I thought this interview with Instragram/Threads’ Adam Mosseri on Hard Fork was a lot more down-to-earth and (hopefully) honest than I had expected from a Meta executive. It gives me some hope. (If you’d rather read a text version, The Verge got an interview too and it covers a lot of the same ground.) [🔗 Hard Fork // overcast.fm]

6️⃣ Want to be wowed and horrified at the same time? This website will tell you all kinds of stats about your age including how many times your heart has probably beat, how many people who were born on your birthday are still living, and lots of notable things from history during your lifetime. Here’s mine. [🔗 you.regettingold.com]

7️⃣ The English language is dumb. Here’s a list that Dictionary.com put together of examples where every letter of the alphabet is silent within the word. [🔗 dictionary.com]

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Take a Chance

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Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know.

7 Things

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you probably know that Instagram (AKA Meta, AKA Facebook) launched Threads a few days ago. It’s another social network for microblogging and is pretty much a clone of a non-bloated Twitter. I’ve been kicking its tires for a few days, and I’ve got some thoughts™:

• Great name! I’m sure Meta’s glad they held onto it after the last iteration.
  • That icon is pretty great too. It’s, well, iconic in a way that Bluesky’s isn’t.
• I hate that people I don’t follow are back in my timeline. I’d forgotten how much that bothers me.
  • A few days later, I’m less angry about it. I’ve found a few worthwhile accounts to follow because of it.
    • I said a few though. Don’t get yourself too excited, I still wish I could turn it off.
    • If I had to, I’d settle for seeing non-followed accounts only if it were to give context to a reply made by some I do follow. But I’d still want the option to turn those off completely.
• It’s so easy to fall back into liking posts willy-nilly after not having them on Micro.blog.
  • But I appreciate more than ever Micro.blog’s steadfast commitment to no “like” button in favor of more thoughtful replies.

    • I do like Gruber’s observation about what the name implies:

      I don’t think thread is going to take off as a verb for Threads, but it’s a great noun for posts, and it reinforces the notion that you’re supposed to engage with posts by replying.

• No ActivityPub support at launch is a bummer and it gives me doubt that it’ll ever come to fruition.
  • Also, I’m wary to engage much using my threads.net account if I’m just going to ask folks to follow my one true micro.blog account later.
  • I’ll say that the interviews Adam Mosseri gave to Hard Fork and The Verge rekindle some hope in their commitment to ActivityPub.
• Way more friends I know in real life are already on Threads. Many who never crossed over into the Fediverse from Twitter, and many more who had never used a microblogging service before (other than Facebook, which I don’t count because its posts aren’t on the open web).
  • And more are joining every day. I’m sure I’m gonna have to turn off these notifications.
    • I’m not sure why I turned them on in the first place.
• I’ve been searching for a metaphor for help explain the feel of Threads so far, and I think I’ve got it: The exodus from Twitter kind of felt like the start of the Covid pandemic in that my timeline was suddenly a ghost town. Everybody migrated to their own bubbles in Mastodon or Bluesky. With Threads, it’s like when the gathering restrictions were lifted: one big party because seemingly everyone has a Threads-compatible Instagram account. Everyone’s back together once more. It’s chaotic, a little overwhelming, but still pretty fun.
  • That being said, I may retreat back to my bubble for a while until some norms shake out.
• Is Threads not simply a return to text-first Facebook, but on the open web instead of locked behind a login screen?
  • I’ve been thinking about this for a while. Facebook could have been the go-to blogging service that I think everyone should have, had everything been available on the open web instead of closed within its own silo.
    • Granted, a privacy-abhorrent blogging service, but people don’t seem to care about that anyway.
    • For most of its billions of users, that’s what their Facebook profile amounts to: their personal blog - although, I’m sure they don’t think of it using that term. But without the ability to take their content elsewhere, or put it behind a personal domain name, I’ll never think of it as a true blog.
      • In Threads’ case, audience portability and being mostly publicly available on web are built in. That gets it closer to my idea of a personal blog, but still not quite there.
• Om Malik makes a good point about how Threads’ success will make it a go-to playbook, and how if Instagram had used it to launch Reels as a separate app it might have similarly taken off like a rocket ship.
• Meta could have made Threads a tab in Instagram, but it’s definitely a more Apple-y approach to have many apps powered by the same login (think Apple ID), than one monster app with oodles of tabs.
• Word on the street is that Threads may overcome ChatGPT’s record as the fastest to reach 100 million users. That means they’ll have (potentially) expanded the Fediverse by two orders of magnitude in a matter of days.
  • There will be repercussions for ActivityPub, I’m sure of it.
• It’s been very cool to see some people discover microblogging for the first time.
• The lack of a Mac app, web client, or iPad app is a huge bummer. Hopefully they’re coming, but I’m not holding my breath.
• A few more feature requests:
  • Alt text for more accessible images.
  • They’re really gonna have to fix that thing where it loads a bunch of new posts on launch and you lose your spot. Instagram does the same thing and it’s infuriating.
  • Shortcuts actions to enable at least some form of automated posting.
  • Fix the “too many redirects” error when trying to open a Threads link on the web.
  • I’d like to be able to crop a photo as I post it.
  • A Following-only view.
  • Ability to search for post contents, not just usernames.
  • A little clearer notifications tab, and bigger touch targets for post actions buttons to reply, like, quote, etc. (via @mattbirchler)
  • Include the user’s handle in post URLs. (via @gruber)
  • Edit posts, please. I make too many typos.
  • ActivityPub support, of course.
• I’ve already had a friend text me to ask “What are Instagram Threads?” I can assure you that never happened with Mastodon. This thing is going somewhere.

If you’re interested, I’m @heyjb.me over there. For now, you’ll get the same microposts there that go on my microblog.

Oh, and if you’re seeing a bunch of people post links to their Threads profile and you’d like to follow them, there’s nothing easier than using Federico Viticci’s Threader shortcut. Honestly, I have no idea how he whipped this up and wrote the excellent introduction blog post within hours of Threads’ launch. Years of practice, I suppose.

Others’ Thoughts on Threads

Threads // John Gruber

A Threads Thread Blog Post // Robb Knight

Threads // Stephen Hackett

Meta Threads a Needle // M.G. Siegler

My Thread hot takes (and why Bluesky might be toast) // Matt Birchler

(I’ve got way too few women and bloggers of color in my RSS reader. I’m trying to fix that and would gladly accept suggestions if you’ve got suggestions on who to follow!)

Alex Cranz, writing for The Verge:

But you know what other word you can say in polite company without explanation? Tweet. Just say tweet! It has a definition in multiple dictionaries directly related to posting online. It’s a word that immediately connotes the specific kind of posting every microblog including Twitter has tended toward. Tweet is the perfect word to describe a quick short post published to a feed.

Cranz brings passion to her argument, but I just can’t abide. I can’t give Musk the satisfaction of having the brand name for a microblog post, and I guarantee it would confuse folks in conversation. “Tweet” as a verb and noun made it too far into public discourse as those things on Twitter to go back now.

I’ll go with the more generic “posts” everywhere before I call them “tweets”.

Linked

I know they’re not the new hotness this week, but an update from the team at Bluesky reminded me about a feature that I love about their social network:

We believe that there must be better strategies to sustain social networks that don’t require selling user data for ads. Our first step in another direction is paid services, and we’re starting with custom domains. While setting up a custom domain to use with Bluesky and the AT Protocol is fairly straightforward, it does require some familiarity with domain registrars and DNS settings. Yet, over 13,000 users have already either repurposed domains they already owned to use as handles, or purchased a domain solely because of Bluesky. Domains have so much potential as a personalized way to customize identities and as a decentralized way to verify reputation that builds off the existing web. For example, U.S. Senators have used the senate.gov domain to verify their identity on Bluesky without our involvement, and a third-party developer built a web extension that checks if websites are linked to an AT Protocol identity. The possibilities are wide in the domain-as-a-handle space.

I’m a big fan of the domain-as-a-handle idea that Bluesky is spearheading here at scale. The “regular” users can pick up a handle using the service’s domain (e.g. @jarrod.bsky.social), but folks who care and want to truly own their username can buy and hook up a custom domain (e.g. @heyjarrod.net). I, like Gruber, think it’s a smart and genuinely useful way for a social network to make some money by facilitating that domain purchase, too.

But the real advantage, apart from name recognition, is that it would eliminate the land rush that comes with every new social service launch as people scramble to secure their preferred handle. If you already owned a domain name and we’re able to use it as your handle across every service, you could rest easy knowing your personal internet identity would always be there for you to use.

Finally, with domain name redirects and forwarding, it would be so easy to point that canonical domain like heyjarrod.net to one of those Linktree-like sites that are so popular these days to list all your social accounts.

Bluesky is getting the username part right, at least, and it’s a model that I wish my beloved Micro.blog and newcomer Threads would follow.

UPDATE 2023-07-08: According to Micro.blog’s Manton Reece, he’s on board with implementing domain names as usernames! 🎉

Linked

Stephen Hackett, with the most realistic Threads take so far:

So as Twitter continues to evolve into the Internet’s silliest island, Meta is ready to come in and build a mansion right on the beach. I don’t often root for Meta to win, but I think if anyone could replace Twitter for the masses, it’s going to be them with Threads.

Linked

A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.

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1️⃣ I love this idea of remote SharePlay sessions for road trips in the car. [🔗 Chance Miller // 9to5mac.com]

2️⃣ The perfect send-off for an exceptional app. [🔗 @christianselig // mastodon.social]

3️⃣ If you’re interested in Vision Pro development, definitely give Steve Troughton-Smith a follow on Mastodon. He’s offering ongoing looks into his work in the simulator and how he’s adapting his apps for the new visionOS. [🔗 @stroughtonsmith // mastodon.social]

4️⃣ The ATP boys had me in stitches and then yelling at my phone with their latest members-only iPhone tier list episode. Worth the $8 even if only for one month! [🎧 @atpfm // mastodon.social]

5️⃣ I’m consistently impressed by Vanity Fair’s YouTube videos. This time, they featured a Casino cheating expert who reviewed popular cheating tricks in movies and explained why they would or would not work. He’s so smooth with the cards! [▶️ Vanity Fair // youtube.com]

6️⃣ The Slow Mo Guys are still producing some of the very best content on the internet. This super slow video of two ultra-powerful magnets slamming together looks like something straight out of Doctor Strange. [▶️ The Slow Mo Guys // youtube.com]

7️⃣ It’s a Slow Mo Guys double-header! I can’t get enough of their hilarious friendship. I’m a sucker for someone laughing uncontrollably at their friend; for instance, when he dives headfirst into a giant water balloon. 🤣 [▶️ The Slow Mo Guys // youtube.com]

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Take a Chance

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Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know.

7 Things

Sebastian, writing for their Bear Blog:

The reason why I didn’t start a blog in the last five years? Simple: I liked to fantasize about starting more than I liked putting in the work. Everytime I daydreamed about writing, I felt great. Staring down the blank page, on the other hand, didn’t feel great. To be honest, deep down, we all know why we don’t start stuff. How many more posts on avoidance and procrastination can we stomach, really?

Here’s something unusual, I think: Trying to break through a blank page to write something worth reading is never a problem I’ve had.

I have effectively endless ideas for the things I want to write about — just never enough time to write them. They each have a title and perhaps a few bullet points of content that I jot down when the idea sparks. Places to start, in other words.

But when a really good idea strikes, I can’t help but write all of it down in one go. This post, for example, was written from the toilet (sorry, if TMI) in a Shortcuts prompt because I just had to get it all out of my head in the moment. But when I don’t have an all-consuming blog post to materialize, I turn to my list containing dozens of fragile ideas to cultivate into something I’m proud to publish.

Linked

Wes Davis and Richard Lawler, writing for The Verge about the new 800 tweet per day limit for unverified users (8,000 for paying, verified users):

The limitations are being applied one day after Twitter suddenly started blocking access for anyone who isn’t logged in, which Musk claimed was necessary because “Several hundred organizations (maybe more) were scraping Twitter data extremely aggressively, to the point where it was affecting the real user experience.”

Good to hear that this change is having zero effect on the real experience for Twitter users. Oh, wait…

Can I interest you in a social network that doesn’t limit the number of posts you can read, is third-party developer friendly, and gives you a whole website and blog at your own domain (that can’t be taken from you or turned off) for $1 per month. Or you can read and reply to posts for free.

Linked

This is a peak at my final correspondence with Chris V (as summarized by ChatGPT) for the PenPals project this month:

Chris congratulates Jarrod on buying a house and shares his experiences with property ownership in Switzerland. He discusses language learning, revealing his proficiency in Swiss German, Dutch, English, and partial knowledge of French. Chris delves into his journey of writing in English, emphasizing the creative freedom it offers. He explores his love for fiction writing, specifically in the fantasy and science fiction genres, and details his learning process. Chris expresses excitement about his new job in AR, the benefits of working in a startup, and his preference for a less bureaucratic work environment. The conversation also touches on the challenges of maintaining a blog, writing habits, and reflections on life choices. Jarrod responds, acknowledging the challenges of the housing market, expressing admiration for Chris’s multilingual abilities, discussing ASL, and sharing insights into his work schedule. Jarrod expresses optimism for a more open social web, discusses his job in a gear shop and guiding company, and shares fond memories of camping. He appreciates the exchange of personal stories and looks forward to future interactions.

Read the entire conversation →

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If you’d like to be a penpal for this project, please reach out! I’d love to get you on the schedule.

PenPals